


Mind Crooked As These Trees, Heart Twisting Like Brittle Weeds

by ifthereisaZuknowitsME



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Beast!Wirt - Freeform, Brotherly Angst, Gen, Lima Syndrome, One Shot, Tragedy, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthereisaZuknowitsME/pseuds/ifthereisaZuknowitsME
Summary: Defiance. That was all Greg has left in his agency.Or: A Soulmate AU that took a nightmarish turn.
Relationships: Greg & Wirt, The Beast & Greg, The Beast & Wirt
Kudos: 19





	Mind Crooked As These Trees, Heart Twisting Like Brittle Weeds

**_♥_ **

_Spool of web, comb of honey, and the sun falling -_

_Into your eyes._

_Come, take my hand, let me drown in your dying warmth._

_♥_

The clock hand chips away at the hour.

During the pause, Greg lets the rushing sound of the water from the mill swarm his brain with its voracious notes, and then back to the _tick-tick-ticking_ drilling through his ear and into the other. He lets the clashes of sound jog and rattle in his skull. Better the disharmonious noises then the deafening silence.

The moon - a circle of translucent linen, beams between the slices and crumbs of trailing, malformed clouds - paints silver on his face. His hand reaches out to touch the fall of the moonlight, catching the film of gossamer. 

The light swaying from the tallow candle, a little spark that had bloomed into a golden aureole, brings a zest of life in the dead of night. The trees seem to creep closer for warmth, their wretched hands outstretched in greed for the soul smoldering under the thatched roofs. Greg stares at them, his nose upturned. “Bad trees. Keep your roots where it belongs!” The inching sly roots recedes, affronted at being called out.

The house creaks in agony in an attempt to settle its old bones. The light dies out. He rekindles it, whispering exultation and encouragement to defy the frost that killed the landscape that once was rusted with the blood pumping from the vessel of liveliness: the crimson spread of the sun, a throbbing heart. The brown, gold, and maroon leaves blanketing the forest floor like detached hands - and now, all he sees, on miles without end, hills and mounds and trees, bare, their gray organs laid out, waiting to be smothered in snow, a sordid, sad sight for his eyes to feast on.

Fall, a ghost from the past. Greg hopes it comes around again.

He misses the autumn, the dreaded feeling comes every year. The first leaf to brown away is like the call for the firm finality of all things in existence. He may beckon the sun to him, but he can’t stop winter and her legions of ice and snow.

He sighs with longing. He supposes he can say autumn is his first love. Giggling, he remembers Ms. Langtree’s song. “ ‘A’ is for autumn that gives to me…beauty in-” His mind stutters to a halt, like a vintage record scratching over one word. “Really, my creativity juice needs a battery replacement. I guess I’ll take a break! Can’t be making any more boo-boos like that.” 

He hopes Langtree is doing well with her soulmate.

The thought of ‘soulmate’ brings a twinge to his chest. His nails dig into a small scar on the wooden ledge. Evidence of the many mornings and nights spent bruising that same exact spot.

He sinks into the movement of the flame: each swish brings a different array of patterns bespattering on Jason Funkerberg, who is lying flat and wide on the window sill as his human friend continues petting his back which has lost elasticity, and is spewing fluids that makes his flaxen-green skin the texture of congealed porridge. He croaks, his tongue flopping over his rubber lips to catch imaginary flies.

“Oh Jason Funderberker, I do hope your throat gets better soon.”

The lone dog of The Old Grist Mills howls. His wails of entreatment seeps through the hidden slits and holes at the back of the house; his pitiful song later muffled by the creatures in the woods who titters and patters about in secret. He had to kick him out because he kept eating the food in the storage and scaring Jason. But he throws scraps at him, and sometimes sneak in candies when he gets some from the Outside World.

The moon tuts at him. “That’s not very nice, Greg. He could be cold.”

Greg tuts back. “Trying to eat Jason’s leg is not very nice, either. And he has fur to keep him warm. You won’t get a ringer ‘round me Mister! Not this time!”

The moon harrumphs, disappointment radiates off him, but he doesn't pay him any more admonishments as he is too busy warily staring at the rush of a monstrous cloud heading towards him. 

Greg puckers his lips into a pout at the silent treatment and tries to ignore the fact that he still feels guilty. To his shock, the moonshine ceases as hordes of clouds consumes him. Greg tries not to hear the quiet, hoarse screams. Darkness consumes him, too, when the light finally flickers out.

But that’s ok! He fumbles around in the dark for the tinderbox, repeating the optimistic phrase in his head in an endless, tireless rhythm. _It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok_ \- there! He strikes the match and sets the tip of the glowing stick to the melting candle drooping sideways on the sill. A harsh wind booms in the night, extinguishing the weak flame. For a moment he thought the dog made his way inside. A thudding noise breaks the silence, a pair of gleaming holes breaks the darkness next. It peers down at Greg from the window. Sleep: sudden, abrupt, a two-timer in hiding, snuffs his mouth and eyes, like a criminal with a chloroform rag. A yawn is slowly itching into an ascent in his throat. Greg slaps his hand over his lips, not wanting to lose this tug of war with his conscience at stake.

An unearthly chill immerses through the living room space, and it didn’t come from the nascent winter. No matter how much he doesn’t like the frost queen of the seasons, he knows she isn’t callous enough to lance daggers of ice in his heart. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, scrambling to pull his fleeting consciousness back from the nether. He feels his mind slipping away, too, like a lost child sliding around on a vast ice-rink, submerged in a fog.

The moon tears himself free from the jackal-like clouds. Light rains down, swiping away the curtain of black from the occupants of the cabin. It should be counted as a victory for Greg & Co.

He looks up to see two dark holes boring through him. Its antlers of twisted branches cast large shadows of devil horns on the floor. ‘Wirt’ is crouched on the sill, his hand gripping the top rail, while the other is clutching a bag of candies. Pink and white. He blinks rapidly, they look like eyeballs. He yawns. Drowsiness warms his limbs like a blanket.

Ennui resurrects from the dead, setting off to plague his mind. ‘Wirt’ - 1,589, Greg - 1,311.

He descends to dreamdom. 

**_♥_ **

_Your heart next to mine, next to his, in the dead bough_

_You have both of us now._

_The raven will always be at our door._

_But, you will never need anything forevermore._

_With rage you cry that I am keeping you in a cell._

_But darling, you need to know, fewer pieces fit so well._

**_♥_ **

The sleepy fragrance of earth unfolds from the tilted soil near the bend of the stream. Greg yawns as he kept kneading the dirt into an even surface, all the while squinting his eyes at the brisk glare of sunlight scintillating through icy dewdrops hanging onto the reeds. He gets up, dusting his hands on his pants, and trips over his shovel when he had stooped over to gather the pebbles he collected from the creek this morning. They range from bright turquoise, sandpaper pink, amber brown, to plain black and white. Artisan choices, he made sure Jason would get the cream of the crop. No less would suffice.

He arranges the beautiful stones in a circle on the grave. At the top center, he planted a large brick to stand in as a tombstone. 

After that, he stood back on the balls of his feet to examine his first ever funeral work. He wants to sing a hymn, a song, or at the very least, say _something_ , but the words won’t come tumbling out. 

He feels very lost.

When his heart begins to lower to the bottom rungs of his stomach, leaving behind a gaping hole, he turns to leave - to the house. And busy himself. 

He starts with the pillow first. Old and crinkled, they were tearing at the seams and feathers bulging from their linen cage, so he went to the bathroom to sequester the sewing kit behind the broken mirror. He grits his teeth, smiling wide, and starts sewing the fissures back whole - while ignoring another set of fissures appearing somewhere deep inside him. He can’t stand to go near the windowsill, so he has to hum in order to fill the silence in his head. 

He hums the tune that Lorna used to sing while she does the household chores. She was the one to teach him how to sew in his dreams. He messes up the last few stitches and has to do it over again, but he rips the tear more in the process and watches all the feathers burst out into a billowing dust. She would have gently removed the pillow from him and demonstrated the correct way to fix it.

He misses her dearly. It has been a few months since she last appeared in his dreams. He hopes nothing bad has happened to her soulmate, Aunt Whispers, who she said was having issues with her spine. He hopes she cuts down on turtles, they may be green but they can’t replace vegetables. 

Finding a rag hanging over the oven rail, he rips it into itty bitty pieces to use as a substitute for pillow stuffings. When he goes back to the pillow he sees with a fresh perspective that the cover was a lost cause - _but_.

Armed with a needle and a spool of thread and his strips of rags, he fashions the pillowcase into - a dress! Brimming with satisfaction, he goes outside to give it to Sir Basker, who glowers at the dress and steps a few feet away, body huddling close to the bag of candies Greg discarded to him.

It had taken him an hour to wrestle the dress on him. “C’mon boy, don’t you wanna look nice for the missus during spring?” Yes, he is jumping ahead a season. Winter just started, but let him have his fun. Sir Basker barks at him. “Fine...Oh, I know!” He takes the dress back from him and goes back to the house. He returns to his canine friend with a newly improved version of the pillowcase: a blanket.

“This for you since you can’t be in the house anymore.” This time, the dog licks his hand in thanks. He smiles, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

He resumes his list of chores after the sewing fiasco. He cleans the dried wax off the sill, varnishes the floor, and de-clutters the desk; he wipes the table down, beats the dust off of the blankets, and washes the already clean dishes; he launders the clothes, organizes the bookshelf, and grease the door hinges; he shatters the remaining mirror he found, gathers more wood for the fire, and retrieves water with his pail. 

His body keeps moving until the day blurs to night, and until night makes way for the sun. His hands burn, his legs burn, his eyes strangely burn - even though he shouldn’t be. He isn’t sad.

He wipes a hot tear from his eye. “Well, ain’t that just the wa…”

He faints into ‘Wirt’s’ arms. 

“Exhausting your body to deal with grief…” There is a tempered mirth in its voice. “Really...That’s such a…”

Say his name, say it. 

‘Greg thing to do.’ But that was from Wirt, who is on the other side of the stream. He is rocking along on a boat, awaiting for his destination within his sleep. 

By the time he got there, his brother was gone.

**_♥_ **

_Mom, Dad_

_Figures receding into the gray tunnel of footless steps_

_Taking flight, his hand struck forward to grasp their shadows_

_Alas, the wind blows through his fingers_

_Their names has long left him -_

_His name was close to disappearing, too_

_Replaced with ‘sweetheart’, ‘darling’,_

_And the more dreaded word:_

_Soulmate_

**_♥_ **

Greg comes to be in slow, dazed beats. He lets out a soft groan as reality pulses and thrums around him. It's dark out, and very cold. He snuggles further into his cocoon of blankets, into his tunnel of warmth, a barrier from the blast of cold emitting next to him.

“Good evening, sweetheart.” ‘Wirt’ said, an arm bent beneath his head against the pillow, an antler comfortably laid on the headboard. Thumbing through a dense tome, It doesn’t have a pair of eyes (the Beast plucked them out), but Greg can tell that from the way that it is holding the book close to its face, and its stern lips, that whatever words are engraved upon the mildewed pages has captivated It. He takes a moment looking at the sharp, black, dead branches entwined into a pair of indelicate horns. Crumbling leaves, mosses, and bits of sediments drape along the ridges as ornaments. It reminds him of Christmas, and not of the special holiday he has experienced in cheerful songs, television commercials, store decorations, and family gatherings, but a holiday celebrated by pagans in the olden days of its origin.

How can a thing be so savage, but refined - _elegant_ , even?

He takes out his hands from beneath his cowl of pillows and blankets to tug them over his face, but a cold, pale hand stops his attempt, and drags him closer to the sphere of chill undulating near him. The book left aside, Its empty sockets examines him in a placid yet stern manner. Greg groans, wanting to pull his hand back to someplace much warmer. He looks at the small smirk on Its face and knows that it knows what he is thinking. “Did you have a sweet nightmare?” It hums, hooking a long leg over Greg. It feels like a block of ice landed on him, smearing cold all over the materials, stealing the little warmth he had. It speaks again, lowering its face until their foreheads were breadths apart. “I see you have hurt yourself.” His words sift through the room like an arctic wind, smelling like musk, and candles and incense from graveyards. Its hand, still firmly clutching his injured one, tightens in warning. 

Greg winces, his hand is in the process of healing from smashing the mirror he found when he was cleaning the house. The glass exploded into shards, cutting deep into his skin. He had wrapped gauze around his bleeding hand and promptly ignored the blistering pain until now. He probably should have cleansed the wounds with alcohol but he didn’t care to find it then.

Its antler moves, scraping against wood as It moves its other arm underneath him, rolling Greg over on top of Its chest. Greg squeaks out, indignant at the perpetual off-hand attitude of his room-mate. It rolls over again, and suddenly, he is hedged underneath Its body, suffocating in a crushing, possessive embrace. He wants to make a joke that a soulmate’s hug should feel like being enveloped in soft, blissful warmth, not a harsh blanket of snow. But then he will cry if he says that, so he settles in, choosing to listen to his heartbeat, otherwise he will have to contend with the hollow silence in Its chest: a cave that once had a heart. His injured hand is at the side of his head, still covered by Its hand. The pain subdued by the chill coming from bones and stagnant black blood.

When a human body enters a state where they’re shocked by deathly cold, there comes the merciful end where they delude themselves into thinking they are warming up. Greg feels a spark of heat coming from above him, he focuses on the direction of the warmth, and sighs as he wavers between imagination and reality. He imagines that the thing on top of him is really Wirt.

Except, he knows deep in his heart that never in his life would his brother embrace him like this.

He wonders who Wirt soulmate would have been? The Beast possessing his body keeps saying it would have been Greg, but he knows that can’t possibly be true. Sure, he has felt his heart tugging at him when he was alive, but Wirt never reciprocated. True soulmates is when both parties feel the sensation of their hearts thrumming on strings.

He wonders if Wirt had ever been right about Sara being his soulmate.

Soulmate, he is torturing himself thinking of that damned word again.

He would hear stories about how when a person meets their soulmate for the first time, it is like your soul has clinked together into a perfect puzzle, the end result is the blinding warmth and euphoria they would experience. A high that reaches to the highest peak of the mountain, and when they fall together they descend into a gentle bed of cushions, instead of crashing into concrete.

When you meet your soulmate, you shouldn’t feel like your heart got sucked into itself, creating a black hole that vacuums your heat from your veins. You shouldn’t feel like your brain has ripped out of your skull, bounding across space to meet your other half in a clash - the cataclysm of Its emotions, memories, and sensation erupting from the seams of your flesh.

And, and, and, Oh my God - He _saw_. He saw what he had done to the millions of people It harvested.

He didn’t fall, didn’t crash. He swam up the trenches to meet the surface of his reality.

**_♥_ **

Greg used to love summer. When the season rolls around, he is assured of the happiness that comes along with it. The sunlight would pump vibrancy into everyone, even the moody Wirt. There would be red on everyone’s cheeks, bluebird tunes filling the air, fireflies coming out of their hiding to show everyone their breathless performance at night. The ice-cream truck would wheel through the children-filled streets. He would lick off the rainbow sprinkles of his chocolate sundae and run to the hot dog cart. He'd ask the man to dump as much sauerkraut as he humanely can on his grilled frank. He'd talk to his friend from school, chat to the old ladies at the bench near the park. He would sing a song he heard from a cartoon he watched. He would play with Wirt for the whole evening since neither of them had to worry about homework. And when the moon replace the sun, he wouldn't need to bear the chill, and relax into the warmth of the night as he gaze at the twinkling stars.

Then autumn stole his heart, around a few months ago. He doesn’t have an explanation for it as he does with summer. Summer, he has concrete, happy memories. To him, fall was just the season between summer and winter. A long string of months where he has to deal with school. He actually didn’t like the season.

After all, that’s when they went over the garden wall.

Now how many years since _that_ happened?

Perhaps he enjoys the peace he gets from the red, dying leaves. The quiet that is a symptom to only fall; not the unnatural stillness of winter. Fall, a pause of animalkind and humankind, a refuge they seek when they start their journey into the next seasonal extreme.

He steps over the piles of leaves, following the trail of the afternoon sunlight into the creases of the woods. A rabbit passes by him. White as stone. Eyes red as rubies. He heard tales about rabbits with skin and eyes like that.

“Bunny bunny bunny. Aren’t you a pretty bunny?”

It hops away. When he comes to a clearing, he sees a meandering river that flows north to a modest house. Crossing a small bridge over the stream, he goes to the backdoor where the garden is. The door opens to an unreality - no other word matches close to the blurred dimensions of the living room. Everything is gray. The blue flock paper that would have been eye-catching and beautiful looks drab and dull. The sleek pianoforte tucked in the corner of the living room looks like a machine from a factory. The plate of panforte lying on the black surface seems to be in place with a dreary atmosphere. Greg had left the door open, but the blazing red sunlight was brimming angry red against the force-field in this house, like a siren-light rebounding against a mirror. No emotional depth, or color, or sensation exist in this partitioned world. He hates this. But a bewitching golden glint from a table keeps him put. A jar of honey.

He takes out the sunken honeycomb with his hand, letting drips of golden liquid ooze out from the coves. He bites it. “Agh!” Something sharp pricked his tongue. He scrutinizes the honeycomb and sees a scissor peeking out.

Adelaide’s scissor.

“Beatrice!” He gasps, he looks around, eyes frenzied and wild. “Beatrice!” He runs around, his lungs swelling in excitement and terror - for what if the Beast knows about this? He hurriedly checks the house around for a mirror. He runs to the bathroom, expecting to see Its gruesome face in the mirror, but it was fractured. He sees pieces of himself fraught with panic, distress, yet hopeful. His eyes were puffy and red, his dark brown hair in disarray. 

“Greg…? Oh Greg!” A voice yells out at him through the doorway. It is her. She is dressed in a morning robe with a light blue cardigan, her hair is mussed up, and they are bags underneath her eyes. She didn’t look like she had been sleeping well. They stare at each other for a long moment, silence stretching thin over their heads as they examine the miserliness etched in their features.

The woman rushes to hug him, he happily returns the embrace, gleeful that there is _somebody_ he can talk to that was human. “The Beast, Greg. What happened to him? Oh please tell me he didn’t get Wirt.” They were tears in her eyes as she choked out the words. “I saw fragments of you guys in my dream, but they stop coming after - I don’t know. It’s too hard to remember, but Wirt fought the Beast. Greg what happened!”

He struggles not to cry as well. “The Beast won.”

“No…” The tears wouldn’t stop now. She turns around, trying to stifle her sobs. The fog and gloom of the house seems to wrap around her like a shawl, and she is going deeper and deeper within the blur - no. Greg is losing her. “Beatrice.” His loud voice falls flat into the glum ambiance. He tries to speak louder. Shout. But the noises he is making have lost all power. Beatrice is disconnecting from him.

He's about to scream, but then she sharply turns around. “Greg, where are you right now? What is happening?”

Relieved, he spills his story. He starts from the beginning, the moment when the Beast found out that he was his soulmate, and would stop at nothing to have him. And to have him, he first needed his brother: Wirt, the pilgrim turned sacrifice for love. He glosses over how the Beast degraded his body, his eyes dull when he recounts the countless mental siege he had suffered. How the Beast is keeping him in the mill, the first place they have been to in….whatever this place is.

He is sixteen now, he cries, finally. Eight years of imprisonment.

They were both sobbing now. She hugs him, tightly, protectively. She whispers, “I’ll get you, don’t worry. I’ll come save you.” The house collapses in increments. The swirl of gray tightens around them before the wall rumbles, shaking the ceiling above them.

“…I’ll save you.” She repeats for the last time, like a solemn oath a gladiator takes before rushing into a massacre to save his men.

He wakes up, looks to the side, and sees the Beast sleeping. Its body curled around him in a fetal position, Its hand gripping his side. Greg's body was between Its legs. He listens to Its soft snores for a few moments before getting up, untangling himself from the mass of cold and decay.

**_♥_ **

Eight years. 

What if it is actually nine years? 

What if he is older than he believes he is? The thoughts roil across the front-line of his brain as he hums a loud tune.

The Beast is gone. It drops a few times a week. When It comes in one day, then It won’t bother to appear the next. Greg doesn’t understand why It bothers to come at all besides bringing in stuff - oh wait. Soul bonding: what soulmates say when they go for their other seeking physical affections. For him, however, everything seems to be heavier after those sessions.

He doesn’t believe in soulmates. It doesn’t seem such a fair concept. By definition, soulmates are basically people fated to meet and be together forever, right? He rather choose his own person then let the whimsies of fate decide it for him. It seems such a lazy, careless mechanism - perhaps it is design fashioned in this world. In his world, you wouldn’t know who was your soulmate. Wirt found out that Sara was his other half when they stumbled into this warped dimension, and even then, he found out through his dreams.

He is on his mat, blankly staring at the ceiling. The familiar heaviness slowly setting on his chest like a boulder. He tries to distract himself by listing all the items in the house as he waits for the grains of time to pass by and announce the presence of his savior - Beatrice.

Paper-clips. Duck-tapes. Bed. Pillows. Shelf. Corkscrew. Mason jars. Wrench. Rug number one.

Rug number two. Laundry basket. Plates. Soap. Shower caddy. Wine-box. Shoe box. 

Tallow candles. Tinder boxes. Bottles of detergents. Strings. Ribbons. Pliers.

Bloodstained wood-axe. Pots. Wooden stools. 

Chairs. Socks. Potatoes. Flour. 

Book with a googly eyes 

(he used to beg the Beast to teach him,

But, maddeningly, It always refused _. - Pray tell, why?_

 _You just need to come straight to me if you want to know something._ ) 

Yada yada. Pipe cleaner. Mop. Rag. Spoons. Forks. Glass jars. Paper. Pins. Comb. Dead 

pumpkin. Eggs. Containers. Picture frames with no pictures. Paints. Baby outfits. Loofahs. Fabric squares. Shower curtains. Coffee mugs. Piles of wooden tiles stacked in the corner of somewhere. 

....Curtain hooks. Curtains. Shower caddy, wait. He said that already. Blankets. Pails. The minutes keep falling in…

_“You never needed words to explain the world to you.” It said pithily, when Greg once again begged It to teach him some of the words in the books. He blisters at the rejection, heat flaming his face._

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to kick out the uninvited memories from his mind. 

“Ugh…” He groans, rolling over to his side. He doesn’t _want_ to sleep, but there is nothing else to do. He got greedy with trying to handle all the chores at once, and now he is out of things to do, which is bad. He hates the boredom, hates how the stagnation rots his bones and mind. 

He can almost imagine the hands ticking from the broken clock, again.

He gasps, he forgot to mark another tally for the day. Again.

“Ugh…” He gets up to his weak knees, and trudges over to the closet-room. His brain feels like mush. He takes out a cleaver from underneath the rug. Then, he pushes some tools and a broom aside so he can carve a mark on the back of the space. The wall is littered with mutilations. Hundreds of thousands of lines scratched onto the wooden surface.

Night falls, the moon is gone.

**_♥_ **

Beatrice marches through the tangles of roots and ranks of dead trees barring her path to Greg. She shields her face from the brutal whip of the cold winds slashing her face with droplets of snow and rain. It feels like a rain of bone shards. The path that she was on winds to multiple dead ends, some even leading to her death. A pitfall here. An avalanche there. Her boots skids across the mud and she tumbles down. But she gets up.

When a large lake comes to her view, cresting along the morose red of the sunset, she decides to walk over it, rather than taking a wide berth through the treacherous forest. She is close, she knows it, because she has seen the surroundings in her dream.

Once or twice she almost plunged through the depths when parts of the veil of ice shattered. She clenches her fists and still keeps on walking.

Greg. Greg. _Greg._ His pain-stricken face is all she can see. Her heart constricts when she remembers of the time when he would never have conjured such a harrowing expression. She wouldn’t either. The trials and tribulations that come with growing up ripped away the innocent visage that wrapped around them in youth.

After a while, she comes to the mouth of the lake that trails to a stream up north. The mill. In the distorted shadows and light of the evening, the cabin looks like a beast in hibernation, the surrounding forest its domain. She comes closer, wavering slightly in uncertainty. She steels herself and runs to the door, but a black figure makes her stop in dread.

It’s him.

“Wirt…?” It can’t be him. The branches sprouting from the sides of his skull proves it to her. He isn’t human anymore. He turns around, his cloak flapping in wind. Beatrice chokes, horrified. His eyes are gone. In its place are two pinprick lights. His lips are tinged blue. His face is pale. His unkempt brown hair has grown a little longer.

Within the embrace of darkness, he looks devastatingly handsome. That thought vanishes when he steps closer to her, the low sunlight revealing more of the body that once was. She takes a step back. “No, little bird. I am not Wirt.” It looks at her with idle curiosity and with a blank smile. She stomps forward, but before she can get any further to do anything a root shoots out of the ground to twine itself against her ankles. She falls with a shocked cry, and screams when instead of hitting the hard ground, swarms of roots come to enfold her.

“Wirt this isn’t you!” Irrationality and hysteria bubbles from her chest, because maybe he is there somewhere inside that husk, he has to be hiding there _somewhere._ He can’t be completely gone. She struggles in her binds, but they squirm tighter in response. It walks - drifts, almost -to her. It bends down on one knee. “Of course not,” It says. “Wirt is dead.” And then a strong branch breaks out of the ground, it flails in the air like an arm of a drowning man, and heaves forward to crush her neck. _Crack._

“And so are you.” It smirks. It gets up, dusts its pants, and glances back at the cabin behind It.

**_♥_ **

Greg is walking around the cabin, his limbs moving in sluggish motions, like he is cutting through a syrupy space. Sunlight blasts through the window, revealing dust-motes swimming around as stardust would. For the past minutes, he has been trying to find the source of the crying sound.

(He knows where it is.)

He paces around the room, humming loudly to himself as the wails increase in volume by each passing second. He trips and stumbles over the bunched up carpet. He sighs to himself, he knows he can’t hold this off any longer. Getting up, he lifts the carpet and rolls it to the side. In the center of the floor is a patchwork of tiles, they clash with the ancient wooden panes. He starts tearing the tiles until he makes a small crater. He pulls the remaining tiles away until he opens the entrance to the room below him.

He finally sees the languished frame of the Woodsman. He’s curled himself into a ball, wheezing in gulps of stale air. “Anna… Oh Anna.” He is still clutching the lantern. It bears no flame.

Reality shifts, the bright light dappering the room is replaced with the familiar winter gloom. Greg looks at his bloodied hands. Some of his nails have chipped. He doesn't feel the pain, however. He looks down. Within the crevasse of the floor, he sees the outline of the skeleton. Its bones dull. A hoarse scream seems to be coming from the rusted lantern in its grip.

**_♥_ **

_“All the fiber of your being is entwined with me.” It brings their forehead close together. “Why would I let you go, when that will hurt both of us.”_

_“Let me go anyways!” Greg screams, his face taut with pain._

_It grips his shoulder, its long pale fingers easily circles around his biceps, and draws him close in its tight, crushing hug._

_He sobs. “Give me my brother back….I want him back…” He cries into its throat. “Wirt…”_

_Its voice lowers into a husky, deep croon, like something ancient has been stirred in the heart of the forest. “It is alright, love, you could have never fought against me. He would have lost himself to me anyways.”_

**_♥_ **

He wakes up to the fresh smell of pinewood and dead leaves. He gets up, makes his bed, and leaves the cabin to meet the silver stream.

۵

𝓕𝓲𝓷


End file.
